Market participants and their clients will have access to contracts expiring in March, June, September and December 2024, with dates updated quarterly. Calculations are made in Russian rubles.
“We are developing a product line in accordance with customer demand. The currency pairs for which futures are launched are among the ten most popular in terms of trading volume on the foreign exchange market of the Moscow Stock Exchange” said Maria Patrikeeva, general director of the Moscow Stock Exchange. Foreign Exchange Derivatives Market Department. She also emphasized that settlement futures provide the opportunity to participate in the movement of exchange rates without the need to purchase the currency itself, while allowing currency risks to be hedged and various trading strategies implemented at low cost.
As Banki.ru chief analyst Bogdan Zvarich noted in an interview with RG, thanks to these contracts companies will be able to fix exchange rates, thereby reducing the risks of currency revaluation, which, in turn, will improve financial planning. “Therefore, the above-mentioned contracts can be applied for by companies that carry out economic activities abroad and use Belarusian rubles and Kazakhstani tenge in their calculations,” the analyst added.
“Russia has taken a strategic course towards transitioning trade and payments to national currencies instead of dollars and euros. So that companies and citizens feel comfortable using national currencies (Russian rubles, Belarusian rubles, Kazakh tenge, lira Turkish, Chinese yuan and others), a liquid market with sufficient capacity, where national currencies can be bought or sold without significant costs, including the importance of insuring currency risks,” Mikhail Vasiliev, chief analyst at Sovcombank, explained to RG.
He recalled that to insure exchange rate risks, companies usually resort to the use of derivative financial instruments: forwards, futures and currency options. Exchange-traded currency futures are standardized instruments with lower costs.
“The Moscow Exchange continues to develop monetary instruments in the currencies of Russia’s trading partners (Belarus, Kazakhstan and others). We believe that liquidity will gradually appear in new futures and companies will receive an instrument to insure currency risks. This will facilitate the transition of companies to trade and settle in these national currencies,” Vasiliev concluded.
